Haddock, on Linux support
I wonder if AMD could somehow get a statement of principle from the Linux leaders about AMD64 support? Perhaps as a quid pro quo for the excellent support that AMD has offered, and no doubt will continue to offer, to Linux development?
After all, is there anything really missing in the AMD64 family from the Linux perspective? I don't think so. You'll have inexpensive desktop and mobile, affordable 2P, 4P and 8P workstations and servers, and clustering of 4P or 8P systems for larger compute farms. With the similarity of architecture between small and big systems, the unused cycles from the desktop machines can be thrown into the cluster pool without too much trouble. Those versions of Linux that are used in embedded or extremely cost-sensitive areas may not need 64-bit functionality, but it should help all of us running everything over XWindows immensely.